Date of Award
5-12-2024
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Art Photography
Advisor(s)
Douglas DuBois
Keywords
Closeting;LGBTQ;Memory;Performance;Photography;Queer
Subject Categories
Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts
Abstract
My research and artistic practice explore how queerness can offer a liberatory framework for confronting intergenerational cycles of grief that reinforce the dual closets of emotional and sexual repression. Rooted in my own family’s history of traumatic loss, I explore the dialectics of memory and identity in my project The Girls. I explore how closeting operates in families and archives through several theoretical frameworks, with perspectives from Marianne Hirsch, bell hooks, and Michael Foucault’s History of Sexuality. By investigating the gendered roles imposed by the traditional family gaze, religion, and shame, the text examines how photography, archives, and performance can be used as methodologies for resistance. The final section outlines how I resist closeting through my art, drawing on Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity, Jack Halberstam’s writings on female masculinity, and the role queer pleasure and community play in resistant counternarratives.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Warren, Kathleen, "The Girls: Queering the Family Archive" (2024). Theses - ALL. 866.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/866
